


i'll be seeing you

by LydiaOfNarnia



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Canon Era, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Song Lyrics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-21
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-11-03 11:14:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10966080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LydiaOfNarnia/pseuds/LydiaOfNarnia
Summary: Julian is warm, in a place where Babe has almost stopped believing that warmth exists.





	i'll be seeing you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ruinsrebuilt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruinsrebuilt/gifts).



> can fluff exist in Actual Frozen Hell™? I decree that it can.
> 
> Of course, the characters in this fic are based off of their fictional portrayals from the miniseries Band of Brothers, and I mean no disrespect to the real-life veterans!
> 
> Find me on tumblr at [renelemaires](http://renelemaires.tumblr.com/)!

When Babe opens his eyes to the sound of a soft vibration close to his ear, he startles awake immediately. In Bastogne, sleep is a commodity, and you're never too tired to be scared wide awake by the sound of artillery. If Babe has learned one thing for certain in this past week of hell, it's that humming means incoming, and _incoming_ means _get to your foxholes before you're blown to hell._  
  
It takes his muddled, exhausted mind a few seconds to recognize his surroundings. He is in his foxhole already, and that noise is too gentle, too melodic to be any type of shell.

Julian is peering across the foxhole at Babe's sudden reaction; he hasn't gone quiet. Soft humming still echoes through the still night air, and it takes Babe's face a second to settle into a scowl. "Dammit, Julian, what are you doing?"  
  
"What's it look like I'm doing?" Julian shoots back, huffing. The humming noise cuts itself off when he speaks, so there's no doubt where it came from. "I'm watching the line while you nap. What's got you jumping up like someone lit a firecracker under your ass?"  
  
Babe looks down at himself self-consciously -- he definitely hadn't jumped, and he hadn't been scared by Julian's humming, of all things. That would be stupid. It's not like he's some green replacement anymore, afraid of his own shadow -- now he's one of the ones considered a veteran of Easy, looked up to by the newer guys. It's something Babe's conscious of, and his new battle-worn reputation leaves no room for jumpiness.  
  
He draws himself up with all the self-respect he can muster, pulling his knees closer into his chest. "Just knock it off," he mutters. "Someone's liable to hear ya."  
  
"I'm not being that loud," retorts Julian defensively. "It's too quiet out here. What else am I supposed to do, listen to the wind?"  
  
"Listen for shells. Watch the line, huh?"  
  
Julian rolls his eyes before fixing them forward again. "I _was,"_ he mutters. "Ain't my fault you're so jumpy."  
  
There's a hint of a pout on Julian's lips, red and flushed from the cold. It makes him look even younger than he actually is. Babe is reminded once again that Julian is really just a kid. He talks a lot about the last birthday spent with his family back home, just before he enlisted. Christ, he's not even twenty yet, and he's still stuck in this hellhole like all the rest of them.

A tiny jolt hits Babe, something he's not quite willing to call guilt. Poking his foot from the minimal sanctuary of his blanket, he nudges his friend’s thigh.

“Hey, sing if you want. Just not too loud.”

Julian doesn't glance at him. “I was humming, not singing.”

“And it still sounded that bad?” Babe raises his eyebrows. “That's a talent.”

The bait is there and Julian takes it, just like Babe knew he would. “The hell are you talkin’ about? I'm a great singer.”

“Oh, so you were trying to be off key?”

Julian aims a swat at him. There's no room to dodge, so Babe lets his hand deflect harmlessly off his shoulder before smirking. “Come on then. Sing something.”

For a moment, there is silence. Julian’s brow furrows as he glances between Babe and the line, apparently deep in thought. He opens his mouth, closes it again, and then grinds his teeth. Babe snorts.

“I can think of something, gimme a minute.”

“What were you humming before?”

Julian doesn't answer. It's hard to see in the dark, added to Bastogne’s uncanny ability to siphon every drop of color from their bodies, but when Babe leans closer he's almost sure that Julian is blushing. He elbows his friend for a reply, and the other boy turns his head away.

“Somewhere Over The Rainbow.”

Babe tosses back his head with a raspy laugh. “You're kidding me!”

“It's a great movie,” Julian shoots back. Babe isn't about to argue, but that doesn't keep him from giggling into his fist.

Julian remains stubbornly quiet for a few moments more, allowing Babe to have a laugh at his expense, before his lips start moving again. His voice is quiet enough that Babe he's to go dead silent to hear what his friend sings.

_“Comin' in on a wing and a prayer. Comin' in on a wing and a prayer. With our one motor gone, we can still carry on --”_

_“Comin’ in on a wing and a prayer…”_  Babe chimes in on the last verse. His singing voice isn't much to brag about to begin with, but it's worse here -- roughened by the wind and cold, it sound almost eerie in the silence around them. Still, as it meshes with Julian’s lighter voice the other boy shoots him a smile, and Babe feels a little bit lighter.

“Okay, then. What else you got?”

Julian thinks for a moment before starting to sing again. 

_“Don't sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me -- anyone else but me, anyone else but me…”_

_“No, don't sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me, till I come marching home!”_

Babe grins now, open and unselfconscious. Julian mirrors it with a smile of his own, looking more carefree than Babe has seen him since before they rode into the Ardennes. There's something about seeing genuine happiness on his friend’s face that makes the bite of Cold a bit more tolerable, the darkness less uncertain.

(For one second, Babe wishes he had a camera; to snap a picture of Julian, of this genuine happiness where it seems so out of place, to keep with him forever.)

“You got it,” he says instead. “I mean, you sound like a dyin’ cat, but you got it!”

Julian raises his eyebrows. “The hell d’you think you sound like?”

"I'm a fantastic singer!"  
  
Julian lets out an ugly snort.  
  
"What're you laughing at?"  
  
"You calling yourself a singer."  
  
In response, Babe aims another kick at his shoulder. Julian, the ball of winter clothing and thin blankets that he is, nearly toppled over. He only catches himself at the last moment, and shoots Babe a glower before planting his hand on the top of Babe’s head and shoving him right back. Babe is too comfortable against the wall of the foxhole to be moved, but even Julian’s brief touch is warm.

“How are your hands warm? It's freezing!”

Julian shrugs, but without Babe saying anything he shuffles closer. Babe hadn't realized how cold he was until he feels Julian’s arms wrap around him. Gloved hands press to his cheeks, and he nestles against Julian’s body to conserve what little heat there is between them. It's not the first time they've huddled together for warmth; things like this have become the normal in these woods, where the cold brings numbness and another body holds warmth much better than a blanket. Babe curls up against Julian’s side, leaning his head against his chest as the other boy rests his chin in the crown of his hair.

Babe can feel Julian’s breath, not-quite-warm against his bare face; he can see it in the air, crystallized clouds hanging for just a second before vanishing. Breath is good -- breath means that, in this moment, they're both alive.

“I used to sing,” Julian says, voice taking on that thoughtful, melancholic tone that Babe has come to know well. It's the way a soldier’s voice goes whenever he speaks of home. A life before, of a childhood he used to have; people and places and memories that are no longer real, only ghosts that persist in haunting the lonelier corners of his mind. Babe has his own phantoms; he doesn't talk about them. Julian is more open, as much as he tries to pretend he's as tough as any of them.

“In church,” he continues. “I was a choir boy. My Ma -- she used to tell me I had the voice of an angel. She sings like a screeching duck, so I don't know what she's talking about. I guess it's just that parent thing, ya know? When you have a kid, everything they do’s a miracle. Everything they touch turns to gold.”

Babe chuckles at this. His mom used to smack him and his brothers upside the head anytime they were being too loud. If his parents were ever head-over-heels for their kids’ dumb antics, it was before his time. “Lemme guess, you're the baby of the family?”

“Only child,” Julian replies, a grin in his voice that tells Babe he knows just how sweet he's had it. 

“Lucky son-of-a-gun.”

“They just called you Babe for no reason? Or did you cry a lot as a kid?”

“Actually, its for my stunning good looks,” Babe retorts, and tries not to react when Julian snorts into his hair. It sends chills down his spine; Babe tries to convince himself it's just from the heat, and not the proximity of the other man next to him.

After that, Julian goes quiet, so Babe does too. He isn't sure what time it is (time in Bastogne doesn't have a lot of meaning) but the sky isn't light and no one else is running around, so he suspects it's either late at night or early in the morning. Whichever it is, he finds that he isn't tired anymore. By now his body is trained to go off of as little sleep as possible; with the threat of closing your eyes and never getting to open them again, Babe tries to keep awake as much as possible. His last memory is of it being a bit after dinner, though, so he suspects Julian has been up through most of the night watching the line while he rests.

He opens his mouth, about to tell Julian to get some sleep, when he hears that same soft voice pick up once more.

_“I'll be seeing you… in all the old familiar places… that this heart of mine embraces, all day and through…”_

Babe knows this song. One of those ghosts drifts through his mind: his mother stirring a pot in the kitchen, sunlight glinting off the copper of her hair as her hips swayed to the gentle melody. His mother’s low voice, filling the house with music; Babe, at the kitchen table, closing his eyes and allowing the song to wash over him. He does the same thing now, both desperate to escape the memory and unwilling to let it go. Julian’s voice is soothing in its cadence, soft as a lullaby. For a few moments, Babe allows it to wrap him up and seep warmth into his chilled body.

_“I'll find you in the morning sun, and when the night is new…”_

Julian’s body is pressed close, voice holding him fast; and for just a moment Babe remembers what it feels like to be warm.

* * *

What really gets Babe after they leave Julian out there isn't the fact that he's dead (people die everyday, even people who were just right next to him, breathing and whole and so _alive)_ but that he's _gone._

There's nothing left of him. They don't get his body; Babe can't collect his things and fulfill the one promise they made to each other. Babe doesn't have anything of Julian’s to hold on to. There is no photograph, no rosary, not even the memory of a last exchange of words. Babe has no clue what the last thing Julian said to him was; all he remembers is the way Julian tried to speak while lying in that snow, choking on blood but still trying to make it. Julian was a fighter. Julian wanted to live.

In the end, it didn't matter. He's just gone.

Babe gets back to his foxhole and sees Julian’s blanket, tucked up in the corner to keep it safe. He remembers Julian folding it that morning, and something in him crumpled. Nothing else is left behind, but Babe can't stay there. He leaves the foxhole without looking back.

Somehow he finds himself in the medic’s foxhole. Memories are hazy, disjointed and twisted by grief. He doesn't know how he winds up with Spina’s arm wrapped around his shoulders, Roe tucked up against his side. He doesn't know whether they speak, or if he replies. He doesn't remember much at all, except quiet.

There is no humming, no melody, no whisper of a song. There is nothing left of Julian, and Babe has nothing of him to hold on to except memories.

He imagined it's Julian’s voice lulling him to sleep, instead of just another ghost whispering out of the darkness of his mind.

_“I'll find you in the morning sun, and when the night is new… I'll be looking at the moon but I'll be seeing you.”_

**Author's Note:**

> but then it must turn into angst because this is Bastogne.


End file.
